Boyd Varty’s talk brings together many fascinating moments: a tribute to Nelson Mandela (who passed away just hours before Varty took the stage at TEDWomen 2013 last week), incredible footage of animals shot on the Londolozi Game Reserve (which Varty’s family transformed from a hunting ground to a game reserve in 1973, and where Varty curren...

From Hong Kong to Istanbul to New York, libraries are one of the defining elements of 21st-century demonstrations, says techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, and they can help illuminate why people risk discomfort, arrest and danger to stand together. A pious Egyptian woman arrived in New York at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests of 20...

Some heartfelt advice from writer Bill Bernat, who’s been there When I lived with severe depression and social anxiety, I found it extremely difficult to talk to strangers. Yet the one conversation that uplifted me more than any other occurred in the dining hall of the mental health wing of a mountain-town hospital. I met a woman who told me th...

Eric Dishman is used to thinking about how technology can transform the world of health care. As an Intel Fellow and general manager of the company’s Health Strategy & Solutions Group, his job is all about finding innovative new approaches to healthcare. And he’s no stranger to talking about them. At TEDMED 2009, in the talk featured to...

TEDGlobal 2014 is themed “South!,” and it will be the first official TED conference held in South America. Focusing on themes emerging around the world, this conference will take a bold look at the ideas flowing from the Global South, discussing innovation as well as social and political issues, art as well as education, resources as well as tec...

Pindrop returns  Escape with host Saleem Reshamwala and journey across the globe in search of the world's most surprising and imaginative ideas. Pindrop isn’t a travel show, exactly. It's a deep dive into the ideas that shape a particular spot on the map, brought to you by the people who live there. New episodes will take listeners to ...

Friendship, cuddling, trust, prioritizing -- while these may not sound so sexy, they can help keep the fires burning in a long-term relationship, according to sex educator Emily Nagoski. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse throug...

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. I need a vacation. I know I’m not the only one feeling this right now. It’s a sentiment I’ve been hearing a lot from friends and on social media, and it’s no sur...

Biohacker and TED Fellow Andrew Pelling creates living, functional biological objects that don’t exist in nature -- without deliberately modifying DNA in any way. In his lab at the University of Ottawa, he’s even figured out how to use apples and human cells to make ears in a petri dish. But how do you do that -- and more importantly, why would ...

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. The shared bed is a window into our deepest vulnerabilities and how we look to our relationships to help us feel safe during threatening times. As a sleep scientist...

Most of us enter the professional world believing that the focus and hard work which got us through our education will help us rise there, too. But we don't yet realize that there are significant obstacles lying in our path. Author Michelle P. King explains how the need to conform can stand between women and success. Between the ages of 24 a...

For the ninth session of TED2017, hosted by TED's Editorial Director Helen Walters and Curation Director Kelly Stoetzel, we look into ourselves with seven speakers who take on subjects ranging from parenting to social interaction and heartbreak, revealing nuggets of wisdom that just might help you lead a better, more fulfilled life. The l...

June 2013 was a shocking month for Dan Pallotta, in a good way. “I thought I was living in an alternate universe or something,” he says. “It was like hell freezing over.” Two things happened in June that Pallotta never expected to see. First, this gay father of triplets saw the United States Supreme Court strike down a key part of the Defense...

June 2013 was a shocking month for Dan Pallotta, in a good way. “I thought I was living in an alternate universe or something,” he says. “It was like hell freezing over.” Two things happened in June that Pallotta never expected to see. First, this gay father of triplets saw the United States Supreme Court strike down a key part of the Defense...

By Paul Farmer At the end of almost a decade spent in teaching hospitals and clinics, most (we hope all) physicians have honed their clinical acumen by focusing on the care of the patient who is right in front of them. Perhaps this is as it should be: as patients, we don't want our doctors (or nurses or social workers) distracted by "outs...

Writer A.J. Jacobs was going through life feeling more grumpy than grateful. To start cultivating a thankful attitude, he decided to show some appreciation to the people behind his daily cup of coffee. Here’s what he discovered when he met his barista. Gratitude is not an emotion that comes naturally to me. My innate disposition is moderately g...

Obsessive navel-gazing can be satisfying, but the problem is, it can also be damaging. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich suggests ways to escape the loop of rumination and learn how to move forward for real. It was Tuesday evening around 11pm. Holed up in my dark office, I sat staring at a set of freshly analyzed data. A few weeks earlie...

Chef David Hertz is trying to build a movement that uses food to create jobs, increase empathy, and even address inequality. Everything changed for Brazilian chef David Hertz when he visited a favela for the first time. It was 2004, and he’d just quit his job as a chef at an upscale restaurant on the most expensive street in São Paulo. A friend...

How did human emotions evolve to help us survive? For the last decade, cultural anthropologist Chelsea Shields Strayer has studied the indigenous healing practices of the Ashante people of Ghana, discovering that emotional pain serves useful purposes -- including the relief of physical pain. In this conversation with the TED Blog, she tells th...

Lucianne Walkowicz, speaking at the TEDGlobal 2011 TED Fellows Talks, Monday, July 11, 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Lars Jan, transmedia director: Lars creates multimedia performances that questions the boundaries between truth and fiction. Collaborating with "Paul," a character that operates in the rea...

Conservation biologist Juliana Machado Ferreira uses genetic data to fight illegal wildlife trafficking in Brazil—a $2 billion-a-year business that affects 38 million animals. In 2012, Ferreira founded FREELAND Brasil to raise awareness of the devastating effects of keeping wild-caught songbirds, parrots and macaws—as well as to release reha...

Yes, it’s number 1 on the list of 7 deadly sins, but pride can actually move us toward our goals -- and toward better behavior -- according to psychology professor David DeSteno. Gratitude and compassion are universally seen as positive feelings. By making our minds value the future, these two emotions make us more patient, more willing to pers...

Political economist, author and educator Sophal Ear's family escaped from the Killing Fields, a story he related in a moving 2009 TEDTalk. Now, driven to give back to Cambodia, he examines the detrimental effects of foreign aid dependence in his new book, Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. Tell us about h...

The last 6 months have been like no other. Since March 2020, every person on the planet has had their life shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic in some way. In the midst of the hardship and challenges, there’s been the sense among many people that this period has helped us evaluate our lives and focus on what’s truly important. And maybe, just ...

What capitalism prioritizes, the world does more of. So how can we change capitalism so that it focuses on what humans really want and need? Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has a surprising proposal. Think of the activities on the list below: Parenting or caring for loved ones Teaching or nurturing children Creating art, music, dance Working in ...

Yes, it has free love, vegan food, Wi-Fi and a low carbon footprint. But it also has unchallenged assumptions, ramshackle housing and a questionable belief system, finds social media analyst Jamie Bartlett. As the sun rises over the Portuguese countryside, I find myself standing in a circle on top of a hill with a group of strangers, grasping h...

In 2009, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published the book The Spirit Level, making a bold case that economic inequality within a society, the size of the gap between rich and poor, has corrosive effects from the bottom of society right up to the top. Wilkinson spoke about their book and research this summer at TEDGlobal ...

Yesterday, nearly every seat of the theatre at the Admiralspalast was filled for the TEDBerlin Salon, the first official TED event in Germany (and, with TEDGlobal's move to Rio in October, the only one taking place in Europe this year). In two sessions hosted by Bruno Giussani, 15 speakers and performers covered an eclectic array of topics, wh...

Behold, your recap of TED-related news: Habitat turns 50! First conceptualized in 1961 as part of architect Moshe Safdie’s thesis at McGill University, Habitat 67 has gone on to inspire several generations of architects. Combining high-rise living with community connection, Habitat’s concrete cluster of homes challenged the contemporary n...

Artist David Gurman's installations use live data feeds from conflict zones to trigger lights, tolling bells, shadows and more, connecting us to the rhythms and intensity of far-away violence in real time. How did you start thinking about conflict in art? I was interested in resonance and wave patterns and energetic exchanges as early as 1...